After a Nippon 2007 meeting today at the site in Yokohama, the staff attending split up into smaller groups and went to check out various restaurants. There are a lot of different restaurants in the Queens Square and Landmark Tower Malls near the Pacifico Yokohama conference centre. They’re not badly priced, either. Certainly I recommend the short walk across to the Queens Square (you go through that to get to the Landmark Tower Mall, about ten to fifteen minutes walk – longer for slowcoaches) rather than eating in the Intercontinental (small portions and extortionate prices).

So, along with Inoue Hiroaki-san, Inoue Tamie-san, Trevor Knudsen (what name for a Westerner living in Japan, try getting Japanese people to pronounce it from the written form), Rodrigo Juri and a couple of the other Japanese, we went in search of something that would fit me (picky beggar, mostly vegetarian) and Rodrigo (on a tight budget). Tamie-san suggested we try an okonomiyaki place (she remembered there was at least one in the Landmark Tower Mall).We went to the Yokohama Landmark Plaza Botejyu (okonomiyaki is food from the Osaka region and this is a chain that started in Osaka).


Now, I’ve been intrigued by the idea of okonomiyaki ever since seeing the character of Ukkyo (uk-chan) in Ranma 1/2. However, in Ranma, the okonomiyaki they make always include seafood. I’ve seen one or two okonomiyaki on the menus at restaurants since arriving here, but they’ve always been seafood (squid and shrimp are very common). Tamie-san believed they would have vegetarian versions, so off we went. We had to wait a little while for a table for nine, but not too long, given the size of the party. Inoue-san got me an English menu while we waited and I looked through the okonomiyaki. Hmm, seafood and pork. Pork and seafood. Seafood. Sausage (probably pork) and cheese. No vegetarian ones. Even the “Tofu special” was tofu and… you guessed it, seafood! They had a number of different vegetables in the mix but no vegetarian option. The place didn’t only serve okonomiyaki, and there were some things I could eat, but I was feeling a little disappointed. When the waiter came for the order, though, Tamie-san explained my restrictions and the waiter said there would be no problem doing me a vegetarian okonomiyaki. Luckily i noticed before he’d finished taking the orders that most of the came with a large dollop of mayonnaise on top, and so we requested it without the mayo.

It wasn’t quite what I was expecting from what I’ve seen in anime. OK, maybe basing my expectations of Japan on anime isn’t the most reliable source, but hey! It was a lot thicker than the what you see onscreen, which looks like a pancake with embedded bits. This was about an inch thick. It was… interesting. I didn’t dislike it, but it didn’t make me want to rush out and have it again. I suspect this is one of those things where you really need a good chef to decide what vegetarian okonomiyaki should look like. Oh, and the mayonnaise should be replaced by soured cream (as an option just for vinegar-haters). It might have been improved by adding the cheese from the sausage and cheese (that was one of the “modern yaki” variants – don’t ask me the difference), because that would have given the ingredients a stronger flavour to complement the sauce.

Since I only had water to drink, and the okonomiyaki was quite filling enough for a reasonable meal, it only cost Y700, too (that’s around $6.50 for USians or £3 for UKians). The reputation of Tokyo as a really expensive place to visit, I think comes as much from business travellers staying at places like the Intercontinental and not being brave enough to try to eat outside the hotel ($120 main courses in the restaurant on the top floor of the Intercontinental). This is not only no more expensive than London, it’s decent quantities of food at reasonable prices.

Very very limited selection of desserts, though – vanilla or gren tea ice cream (with the green tea apparently permanently off the menu) or two variants of the Japanese bean/jelly dessert mix.

An interesting experiment. Worth trying for other vegetarians visiting Japan, since this chain is a lot more accommodating to vegetarians and other limited eaters than many places I’ve tried in Japan.